What is your Tropico Achilles heel?

[Brf]

Hit the Print Scrn button. It will put a PCX picture in your Tropico directory.

[SimTropico]

I always get acrried away withe xport crops like coffee and forget about feeding my people.

[Sticker]

My name is Sam T and don't feed my people.

Its more than that.  I just generaly forget about the idiots and focus on tourism or exports.  Then I catch myself at election time (I always play at very fast, the fastest setting, or very slow, the slowest) and have to build Long Island-style shoe-horn housing developments and build several thousand corn farms.  And that isn't even the tip of the iceberg. 

I generaly don't build a high school for 10-15 years from the beginning, and the cuurch comes after!  The only way I take care of the idiots is entertainment and health care.  Don't even get me started on power.  I typicaly try to avoid electrifing my island for as long as possible, I just don't need the headache.  Military pisses my off as well. 

I always play at the max political and economic difficulty, and thus I try to keep a sizable military (I guess my motto is you either stay out of military or dive in head first).  Then I raise the pay for my soldiers and generals a few pesos and they hate me because they live in shacks (see: above). 

I think I need to start mico-managing my island, budgeting my economy and setting one, five, ten, and thirty year production goals.  I would most likely do best if I got out a pad and a pen and wrote out my plans with my starting funds and look at export values and production averages (which means lots and lots of tests, which I absolutly LOATHE).

Well, at least this has allowed my to get my flaws out in the open so I can confront them, not just hold [CTRL]+[c]+

• +[n]+[t]+[e]+[n]+[t]+
• and feal guilty for the rest of the game 

[JakiusCeasar]

I'm JakiusCeasar, and my strong pint is happiness while having a good profit at the same time, but I'm bad a handling angry people, thank god my strengh saves me form my weakness

[Xzyled]

  I find it hardest to keep the Religion faction happy. Seems no matter how many preists or bishops I have those little church freaks are never happy. I have even gone as far as bribing a cpl of them come election time< still lost >

  And Job quality, aparently my little tropicans think they should be eaning more then what I want to pay them. I usually wait until election tiem to give the raises and then only if its nessesary.

[TeamStar]

I usually wait until election tiem to give the raises and then only if its nessesary.

... and bath in a huge tub of money, while your peasants can't afford a new pair of shoes.   No, no, no ...

[Brf]

  I find it hardest to keep the Religion faction happy. Seems no matter how many preists or bishops I have those little church freaks are never happy.

Dont use priests. Churches have a pretty low quality rating. After you build your first cathedral, close off all your priest slots. Use the Word of God newspaper as soon as you can afford it too.

[sethwbcl91]

My problems are housing, healthcare, job quality, and politics.

Housing - I can NEVER keep up with the population and when I want to make nice neighborhoods with houses or luxury houses then they end up taking to much land. I always end up making big ugly bunkhouse areas by the town but I wish I had better skills at housing and good placed to put them in town.

Healthcare - When making my cities I always seem to forget about the clinics and hospitals. This is something else that is very hard to keep up on and my people never want to be doctors which is something else that effects this factor. I could have 3 hospitals and no one will work in them. What really makes me mad though is when there are 15+ unemployed people and they sit there and whine about how there is no healthcare while they could be the doctors. How lazy.......

Job Quality - I never know where to place my factories, therefore my economy is usually based on farming so I am not making much. I put hotels in but not enough. Since I don't make enough money then I can't pay my people more so then Job quality goes down to like 15. I can't keep up with the carribean pay. In the year 2271 the pay ratio was 18:22:26. The average pay was $19.10, still not to carribean average, sad.....

Last but not least...

Politics - With all these problems I usually end up having to cheat to win my elections by using the contento cheat over and over. Usually what pulls the votes down are these factors, primarily job quality. It is sad when your opponet has 593 votes and you have zip.....

Sometimes religion can be a problem but once I build a Parochial college then I have no problems since the men who go through the P. college have new views towards religion and almost all of them become bishops, same situation with generals and the military college.

My strong points though are farming/food, tourism, environment, capitalism, jobs, and I build plenty of churches/cathedrals......

[TeamStar]

Politics - With all these problems I usually end up having to cheat to win my elections by using the contento cheat over and over. Usually what pulls the votes down are these factors, primarily job quality. It is sad when your opponet has 593 votes and you have zip.....

Maybe you need to re-order your building priorities or take in consideration your character traits.

[sethwbcl91]

Building priorities is a good suggestion. As for my traits, they are just fine. I always look to make sure I don't have any dramatic negatives with any faction, well besides Russia.

I only have three negatives:

Religious: -5%
Intellectuals: -5%
Pollution: -30%

None of these are bad...

[El-Bueno]

 I often fall behidn with housing until I notice shanty towns appearing!

[Coconut Kid]

... My name is Mr.P. I have been EL Presidente for over 4 years, yet I still find balancing the peaks and troughs of exports difficult.  What can be done to help even out - as best possible - this imbalance?

I replied and later deleted the reply. Then:

Yup, tried all those CK. As a micro-manager in Tropico I felt I had ironed out most of the kinks and that the peaks and troughs were due to growing cycles of crops.  ...  Folks, what is your average scoring in a game (after say 30 years) for the farm production stats. i.e goods produced per farmer, # of farmers/vs 'acreage'?

I probably talked about proper placement of Teamsters, etc. Lately the "modular" nature of the NPCs' life has come to light. Knowing the impact of the "Work Module" together with finally realizing that indoor workers do have to be actually present to produce, have done a lot to explain the sharpness of the cycles. The natural cycle of crop production is made worse by poor management of factory workers life modules. When all the workers for a building arrive and leave in a block, things are not operating at the best. The workers should rotate through their 'Work Mode' on a staggered schedule with about one-third present all the time.

... why do you care? If your economy is doing fine on average, just keeping a several dozen-thousand cushion in the treasury is more than enough to get you through the fluctuations of your production. If not - Well, then you have a much, much bigger problem.

Tropicology: Farming by Senior Ruina -
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=5893.0

[Coconut Kid]

This will sound probably really bad, but my biggest weakness is keeping up with housing. It seems the population always gets ahead of me, and then I'm in a mad race to catch up on housing. ...

There has been a sea of ink spilled over this issue. There is no one formula! First - dump your real world assumptions about any links between social class and housing; learn to live in the game world. Don't obsess over collecting the maximum rent. Don't obsess over this - or any - faction based complaint.

Rule One: Each NPC NEEDS rest on a regular and recurring basis. Rest is always taken in a housing unit - except in an emergency default situation which is very rarely observed. The time it takes to recharge the 'Rest Meter' is governed by the 'Service Quality Level' of the housing unit -- that is: the better the housing, the quicker the NPC is done resting.

Rule Two: Most frequently, NPCs go from "Rest Mode" to "Work Mode" which means they walk from their house to their work building; that walk should be as short as possible. Ergo - place housing as close as possible to work buildings. Married couples live where the male chooses.

Rule Two A: The basic "Service Quality Level" of housing building is modified up or down by its immediate (~10 tiles) environment. You may mitigate the 'downs' with 'ups' - another topic.

Within that framework there are dozens of paradox decisions. Intuitively, you do one thing; and there is a hidden, opposite reaction. You have to learn the game through practice.

[Coconut Kid]

My weakness is Law & Order. "Anarchy in Tropico", as Sid Vicious would sing, ... I keep the smallest police force I can and I have never built a prison. ...  I also usually neglect banks, until I don't really need them anymore.

Besides the obivious clues the game gives you about using Police Stations (w\ Policemen) to counteract the radiated crime effects of buildings; it is important to remember that the Police control the Army -- and perhaps Protesters if you have many of them. You would be well advised to match your Army size with a Police force of two-thirds that size. You also need vacant space in your Prisons to hold a quarter of your Army. When an Army\Militarist Coup hits, send in the Police to arrest the insurgent Army employees - and then the 'chicken' Army employees.

It's not too unlike the real world if you decide to make the Bank Building your political headquarters and bribery a major operation. There are the necessary times to assassinate or Imprison minor trouble makers (e.g. Protesters, 'Chickens', etc.); however, the costs in money and hits to respect among the public and their families is far more than a bribe if you have the system in place. Be smooth, manipulate -- the people like it more. First, to use the Bribe Edict you must have a Bank building with at least one Banker employee. More Bankers is better because one must come to work and enter the building to get the order to find the bribed and deliver the bribe. The process from when you designate who is to get the bribe to delivery of the bribe may take quite a long time.

More information on bribes & faction leaders;
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/tropico/cafe/index.php?topic=6346.0

[Coconut Kid]

... I have noticed that sometimes a downturn in the exports has nothing to do with the harvesting cycle.  If there are fewer than five dockworkers, many times there isn't anyone to load the ships with all the goodies, and you just don't get paid or paid very little.
Okay, my Achilles heel - the environment.  The tree-huggers always hate me, and the feeling is mutual ... I just keep everyone else in the fair to very close range and the greenies are outnumbered.

It's certainly important to try to force things so at least one Dockworkers is at work all the time.

Check out bribing the Faction Leader even if you don't care about the Environment.

[Coconut Kid]

... And I tend to build too much, too soon, and not keep enough cash in the treasury, leaving myself vulnerable to droughts, hurricanes, and maritime strikes.

Ah, an impatient Yankee who can't get into the mood of the gameworld. Too much building and not enough watching the girls down at the plaza.